Like Iron Man's JARVIS, providers see AI as the ultimate assistant for physicians

Today's healthcare technology reminds clinicians of how their predecessors viewed important exam room tools from a few centuries ago.

According to Nancy Cibotti, M.D., regional chief medical information officer at Heidi Health and a partner at Boston-based primary care practice MD^2, the adoption of AI is similar to that of the stethoscope in the 1800s, in that it took about 30 years for experts of the time to debate whether the stethoscope was a useful tool.

But Cibotti expects the time of debate for AI's usefulness to be shorter.

"I can't imagine practicing medicine without a stethoscope, and you know I don't think AI has 30 years to do that," Cibotti told the audience at a panel hosted by healthcare AI company Heidi in July. "I think we're going to come to that conversation hopefully sooner."

As the conversation continued, Cibotti explained why she sees AI tools as a "partner, not as a threat," sharing that she is skeptical of some recent studies suggesting AI is going to replace doctors. For example, an April study by Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center revealed how OpenAI models performed better at emergency room triage than clinicians.

But in an interview, Cibotti said she sees AI moving into more patient-facing functionality and workflows rather than just replacing the work that doctors do. AI could take on various patient-facing tasks, including reminding patients if they are due for certain exams or preparing them for visits with educational materials and information on managing chronic conditions.

"So I see AI in healthcare branching beyond the doctor's office," Cibotti said.

Michael Attilio, M.D., chief medical information officer at Rome Health, echoed Cibotti's view, noting that other revolutionary clinical tools, like X-ray machines, didn't replace doctors.

"They augmented what we did," he said.

Attilio mentioned JARVIS, Tony Stark's AI assistant in the Iron Man and Avengers movies, suggesting that just like Iron Man is a combination of Tony Stark working with JARVIS, physicians will team up with health AI to enhance their skills.

"I see AI in the future taking on a very similar role, where on top of doing things like taking away the note writing and the order entry and just the busy work of healthcare, having a resource more knowledgeable than a human that we can lean on to make sure that we're considering things in the right direction, or to prompt us about things that maybe we hadn't thought before, is going to be really important," Attilio said in an interview after the panel.

In the future, Attilio also sees AI helping physicians ask the right questions during patient encounters to glean vital information.

"Imagine the AI as a third, but invisible, patient in the room where it can give doctors the information they need and help get information from or explain things to the patient," Attilio says. "It can bridge gaps in knowledge and communication that currently hold back care."

He added that AI could understand the context of a patient's condition from the start of a clinic visit, eliminating the need to rehash details.

"My hope is that as this develops, [AI] becomes more conversational and understands more of the initial questions that always need to be asked, so you don't have to give a big, long, detailed discussion of what's going on with you," Attilio said.

For instance, in the future, after a patient says they have a headache, the AI will ideally know what the physician needs to ask to support a diagnosis.

Right now, Attilio sees AI tools as too cumbersome to facilitate these conversations.

"Hopefully, it's going to get a lot easier in the future," Attilio said.

Read the first two stories in the series here and here.

Brian T. Horowitz started covering health IT news in 2010 and the tech beat overall in 1996.